Jim Kavanaugh

Yes, you've got applications.

And by the way, we've been public.

We think there's going to be an explosion in applications that are going to occur.

On top of those applications, Matt, as you know quite well,

there's going to be multiples of agents that call on those applications.

What does Confluent do?

It's going to be the smart data platform that is going to be foundational for us to have companies scale AI because it brings the integration of applications, of data, of security, of governance, of intelligence together.

Think models, applications, agents, and the connectors of all that is going to be the underlying data connector around Confluent.

So we couldn't be more excited.

By the way, it fits our M&A strategy.

What do we look at in M&A?

We look for category-leading technologies in structurally growing markets where we can add unique value inside IBM around integration and around delivering synergies on top of our platforms.

This fits extremely well with that overall.

Expands our TAM, very important area, so we couldn't be more excited.

Well, discipline to capital allocation always starts with investing back in our business.

that is both an organic and an inorganic to the extent we remain disciplined around our set of M&A criteria, strategic fit to our hybrid cloud and AI strategy,

synergistic value because every dollar we invest inorganically, we gotta get a multiple synergy.

It's gotta pull software, it's gotta pull consulting, it's gotta pull our infrastructure platform, and it's gotta have an attractive financial profile.

So our capital allocation strategy always starts with the biggest value creator, which is utilizing cash,

in the most productive and effective way to create long-term sustainable competitive advantage.